The moral of your employees and their job satisfaction is crucial to the retention of your staff and a functioning, happy workplace. Without that, your business may suffer as a whole.
As an employer, you face a consistent demand to compete in a crowded economy, while at the same time, maintaining employee engagement. The two major factors that affect your employees’ engagement are job satisfaction and morale.
You may be thinking that better benefits and pay are the easy outs here, they aren’t, nor is more time off. So, eCard Shack has picked out some tips to keep your employees happy at your business and with their jobs.
Read on to find out how you can improve employee morale and job satisfaction…
Show you care – Make a fuss
This may be easier in smaller businesses, such as marketing agencies, but don’t let your employees feel anonymous in their own workplace. Acknowledge and celebrate personal milestones and important events.
You don’t have to spend a fortune if money is an issue. A simple announcement around the office could be enough to lift the spirits of an employee, be it for work anniversaries or birthdays. You just need to get involved in your employees’ lives – show them that you care about them and they have a network of people to rely on. It shows you value them.
Celebrate every single employee’s birthday, send gifts for new babies and weddings, or even have onboarding gifts for new starters. It all shows that they feel a part of something where they are valued not only as employees but also as work-family members. Employees make your business, so you need to make taking care of them your highest priority.
Bring on the fun
Simply, if you play together you are more likely to stay together. Regular work social outings, events, parties or just get-togethers are an excellent way to build camaraderie among staff and management.
This is all part of showing your staff that you see them as more than just your employees, it acknowledges to your employees you can’t succeed without them. Create events that are focused on engagement, such as happy hours, Christmas parties, takeaway lunches or gatherings that generate communication from and among your employees.
The common theme of many ideas for morale is caring, recognition, rewards and appreciation. Rewarding a client win, a good financial quarter, celebrating a specific team’s achievements as a company – it all shows you are together and care for each other. More popular are events, company outings for a day of activities, giving your staff to learn more about each other.
Have something to believe in
Do you have a company mission, vision or values? Make them more than just statements, make them a part of everything you do and your employee does each day. Whether charitable causes and days off or helping customers, show it and celebrate it.
Help employees understand when and how they personally contribute to achieving your business mission. You can do this by demonstrating that you trust employees to be company culture caretakers. When employees find real purpose in their work and have something to believe in, their engagement will increase.
Employees need to understand and share in the vision of what you are doing as a business. That vision alone will motivate and inspire your team and come back full circle in helping company growth. For example, if your team is directly improving the lives of the individuals, tell them how they’ve helped – it gives them a sense of value in what they do.
Respect work-life balance
Most of us spend around 40 hours at work each week, any more than that and our productivity declines. Add into this that those who work long hours are more likely to get less sleep, exercise, and downtime. This increases poor mental health.
The net result is that they are chronically tired, less efficient, stressed, and therefore may have to work longer hours to get their work done. Illness, absenteeism, resentment of work and much more can come from a breakdown in work-life balance. Put simply, it’s not healthy. Employees need the time to unwind, to be refreshed and refocused.
As a manager or business owner, you need to set expectations of work-life balance and actively encourage time off. You can even try early finishes at the end of the week. Another is flexible working – including working from home.
If you can’t give staff what they want when it comes to flexible working, which can be due to childcare, caring for a relative, illness or simply a break from the office, they will move to another company that is more understanding.
Develop & train staff
Align training and personal development with your employee’s career goals to help them be more productive. By making development part of your business values, you can help retain staff and improve morale by showing you are invested in their worth.
Employees feel valued at the workplace when they have opportunities for growth and development. Promotion and advancement opportunities within a business may be limited but you can still invest in professional development through training. By doing so, you can open up new ventures for your business or assign them to new and interesting projects.
Employees frequently arrive at a new company with skills that extend beyond the position they were hired for, so make the most of them. Developing these broad skill sets can lead to greater engagement and satisfaction from your staff and encourage them to remain at your company thanks to knowing you are invested in making them better.
Listen to them
Above all, you need to listen to your staff. This can be for feedback on company ideas, potential clients, management or business decisions. Get them involved in the business from strategy to priorities – empower them and build relationships with them.
This is all about creating an inclusive workplace. You need to ask employees how they are doing and what they think of the business. Listen to the feedback – either from surveys or chats – and remove barriers that negatively affect their satisfaction and engagement. You need to involve your staff in decisions so they feel a part of what they are working towards.
You need to ask them regularly for feedback. This can be more difficult for large companies but either way, you may be surprised by what you learn and how it can improve your business. If you can act on their advice and improve things, your employees’ engagement will increase greatly because they feel as though their voice and opinion matters.
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